Jillian snorted at the irony. “Pot calling kettle black.” She frowned at the toothbrushes, obviously debating if she should actually put them back in the trash where a dumpster diver could retrieve them. “Maybe that’s why the Flying Monkey is at school then. They didn’t get DNA samples from us. Maybe he’s trying to steal our DNA.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Louise started to pace. She thought better in motion. “Why send in an undercover kid when you could do something like put someone in as the substitute school nurse and have her check the fifth grade for lice? They could have had someone follow us on to the train and pull a hair or two out without us noticing. Hell, they could have paid a janitor to clean the floor of our locker; there’s probably lots of our hair with tags intact.”
“Because they’re not smart enough to think of it?” Jillian shoved the toothbrushes back into the trash.
“If I could think of three things in one minute, they should have been able to think of
“He’s definitely at school because of us! There’s no way it could be anything else; he stuck to us all day. I think he would have followed us into the bathroom if it wouldn’t get him into trouble.”
“Maybe he’s supposed to kidnap us.”
“Him?”
“He’s half-elf; he’s probably a lot stronger than he looks. And he might know jujitsu or judo or something. He’s fifty years old; he’s had time to get a black belt in every martial art there is. He could be super ninja.”
“There’s two of us!” Jillian said.
“Three.” Joy proved that she could count.
“Eight.” Nikola shrank back from the collective stare. “Maybe? Not all of us think we should count Tesla, but if we did, we would be eight.”
Smart as Louise was, trying to understand how Nikola existed made her brain hurt. “I don’t think he’s going to try to kidnap us. If he was, he could have done it today easily.”
“Kill us?” Jillian guessed and then shook her head along with Louise. “No, all the same things apply. It doesn’t make sense to send in your kid to do your dirty work. You use someone that can’t be connected back to you.”
Nikola stared at Jillian. “It bothers us that you know that.”
“Muhahaha!” Jillian gave an evil laugh and Nikola ducked behind Louise.
“Jillian!” Louise wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or bad that she sounded like their mother.
Jillian snickered. “It’s been a standard thriller trope since Hitchcock did
“But if the cops believed he was a really a nine-year-old stranger, would they even think to question him?”
Jillian’s eyes went wide with fear.
Nikola tilted his head as if listening to something and then announced, “Mom just got off the train. She’ll be here shortly.”
The twins yelped in unison.
“We should tell Mom!” Louise cried as she ran upstairs with Joy. Nikola started to chase after her but then stopped on the stairway landing when he realized that Jillian was staying in the kitchen.
“Everything? Are you insane?” Jillian shouted as she hurriedly wiped clean the floor and sink. “They won’t believe us. At least for most of it. And the rest? They’re going to kill us for!”
“What?” Nikola cried.
“Jilly!” Louise ran back down the steps to where Nikola crouched on the landing in fear. “They’re not going to kill us.” A shiver of fear went through her as she realized that their parents would never believe that Nikola was alive and real. They might not “kill” the twins, but they might do something awful to the frozen embryos stored within Tesla. “Come on. It’s going to be all right. We won’t let anything happen to you. Okay?”
They ignored two calls from their mother to come help with dinner while they argued in heated whispers. When they heard their father arrive fifteen minutes later, they had reached a tentative agreement as to what to say and who should say it. They crept downstairs only to find their parents in the middle of their own whispered discussion.
Their mother hissed a curse word and growled softly, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No, due diligence starts next week.”
“This is beyond insane.”
“It’s a holding company that they own. It could be just coincidence.”
“Yeah, right.” Their mother slammed shut the refrigerator door and yelled, “Girls!”
“We’re here,” Jillian answered for them as they’d agreed.
Their mother’s visible anger vanished when she saw their faces. “What did you do?” she asked warily.
“We know who robbed us and why,” Jillian said.
“What?”
“After we blew up our playhouse and found out where we came from, we got curious and went through your computer and found the names of our genetic donors.”
“Their names? On our computers?”
